This blog is maintained by the New Mexico Corrections Department Public Affairs Director. The purpose of this blog is to showcase what is happening at NMCD in both the Adult Prisons Division and Probation and Parole.
"We commit to the safety and well-being of the people of New Mexico by doing the right thing, always."
Please contact ashley.espinoza@state.nm.us if you have questions about this blog.

Friday, January 22, 2016

Staffing Shortages

SHORTAGE OF OFFICERS / STAFFING CRISIS

NEW MEXICO DEPT.OF CORRECTIONS

The 2016 Legislative
Session has arrived. This is one in a series of posts from the staff of the New
Mexico Corrections Department. We intend to send a daily update to all our
legislators with key points, facts, figures, personal stories describing life here
at NMCD.

what are the current officer vacancy rates at nmcd?

Roswell Correctional Center: 49%

Western NM Correctional Facility: 40%

Springer Correctional Center: 48%

Central NM Correctional Facility: 26%

Penitentiary of New Mexico: 22%

Southern NM Correctional Facility: 11%

Probation and Parole: 20%

Due to the increased vacancies, the
department is now faced with limited staffing options for its correctional
officer positions. This forces mandatory overtime and places the safety and
security of the facility, the integrity of our officer’s
families, as well as public safety at risk. Mandatory overtime has led to
greater staff frustration, anger, and resentment, resulting in low morale,
higher unauthorized incidents and civil liability, and ultimately an increase
in terminations and resignations which aggravate the department’s
existing rate of staffing vacancies.

Additionally, when correctional
officer staffing remains consistently minimal, normal activities such as
contraband searches, training, offender programming, and other necessary
activities such as inmate recreation and visitation designed to manage inmate conduct
can't be conducted. The daily effectiveness of NMCD’s
operations is dependent upon precise and repeated attention to detail when line
officers carry out their responsibilities, particularly those security posts
and rounds carried out within our state’s prisons, twenty-four
hours a day, seven days a week. Fatigue and low staff morale resulting from
significant amounts and mandatory overtime may cause correctional officers who
are on duty to not be at their best performance. Working mandatory overtime can
cause correctional officers to experience sleep deprivation. Fatigue from long
shifts can reduce attention to detail and affect critical thinking and
performance. The fatigue and low morale the department is currently
experiencing, both in the facilities and the probation/parole regions, is a
direct result of the inability to retain staff, continual mandatory overtime,
and lack of other resources over a sustained period of time, resulting in a
domino effect for New Mexico’s corrections operations.

Probation / Parole Officers vs.
Caseloads:

The
state’s community supervision functions, the Probation and Parole
Division is currently operating at a vacancy rate of 20%. On the other hand,
the probation/parole population has risen by 521 offenders over the last
quarter, resulting in a total population of 17,317 offenders. Consequently, the
average STANDARD case load is currently 110 per officer, which is up seven over
the last quarter. If the division was fully staffed the average case load would
be a much more manageable 88, closer to nationally recommended supervision
caseloads.

The Corrections journey

The journeys of correctional and probation/parole
officers are unique to most professions.Unlike most other professions, these folks begin on their first day of
the basic training academy. Following 10 weeks of training, they are equipped
(to a tune of approximately 7K) and prepared to enter our workforce. At
graduation, enthusiasm, motivation, and idealism are the emotions of the day. The
positive emotions that carried them through the demands of our academy tend to
carry them through a physically and mentally challenging first few months as
they confront some of the most negative and challenging circumstances a man or
woman could choose!

But anyone exposed to the corrections experience,
either as an officer or someone who simply loves them, will tell you that the
journey eventually produces changes in that person. Based upon New Mexico’s
dangerously critical staffing levels, the amount of work they are required to
perform, within the first 36 months of service, the job becomes more than a
job. The job (not their spouses and children) become the central defining
aspect of their lives. And at the point these changes are taking place, those
loved ones find themselves pushed aside. Marriages are strained and often
break. Attitudes are strained and often break.Children are alienated from the parental influence they deserve. Life
development, plans, hobbies, and vacations are put on hold because there’s no time for them.
Very soon, these once idealistic young men and women become
emotionally distant, hardened, and physically absent from the lives of those
sharing their journey on the home front. They become far less effective
in both their workspaces and homes.At
some point, many of these men and women are forced to form 1 of 2 conclusions:

o“I’m going to do a little as possible, do my time, and
then get the hell out of here the day that I’m
eligible for retirement” or;

o“I’m out of here!”

And therein lies the true problem for New Mexico. The
New Mexico Corrections Department, an important compliment for the state’s
criminal justice system and public safety, loses almost all of its graduating
rookies within the first 3 years of their service to our state. The
department’s inability to compete within the job market has left the
organization at critically low levels of staffing that has resulted in
dangerous circumstances and unsustainable operations. More often, when faced
with poor service outcomes, government remains more inclined to look to new
systems, structures, processes, or technology to solve its problems when more
often our problems are human.We hope
you’ll agree that they are as important an asset for
investment as all others.

The solution?

The ability to focus directly on
agencies such as the New Mexico Corrections Department, who are burdened with
hard to fill, hard to retain public safety positions, with a pay plan that
makes the department both locally and regionally competitive with the industry
standards could prove significantly beneficial to the department both now and
into the foreseeable future. Accordingly, the department is working with
the State Personnel Office to develop a targeted pay band system for
corrections and probation and parole officers. If approved and funded, the new
pay bands will bring officers rate of pay up. SPO and NMCD researched starting
pay for officers in other states and at local county jails. The Metro
Detention Center in Bernalillo County, with a starting pay of $17.45 an hour,
was evaluated as a comparative for the analysis for the proposed pay band for
NMCD correction officers. Currently, correctional
officers have the lowest pay in the country.